rise against austerity in greece thousands rally at cards targeting some of the most vulnerable leaving even the most crisis hardly greeks incensed. and euro worries take their toll on the french with president watching his ratings a plummet. russia turns east asia pacific summits economic and political ties with china a growing ever stronger which could on the u.s. and its moves for influence in the region. because it's almost a dead heat between the republicans and democrats in the race for the white house with both candidates looking to set apart their remarkably similar platforms.

look back at the past seven days top stories on the latest developments this is the weekly on. greece's second largest city of thessaloniki has been rocked by protests with some fifteen thousand demonstrators taking a stand against a new wave of punishing budget cuts waving banners chanting slogans and even burning an e.u. flag the event was peaceful as a small army of police officers looked on these latest cuts are especially painful for the country's most vulnerable including pensioners low income workers and dependents but not everyone is against the cuts e.u. and i.m.f. debt inspectors are in athens to assess how the a sturdy drive is going and decide whether the government deserves more bailout money. all of it has more now from. the prime minister antonis samaras has said that he will do everything within his power. to make sure the greece

remains within the euro zone however he did acknowledge that the cuts it is government to are making were both unfair and painful for the greek people but as unfair and painful as they are he says that the necessary as without being in the eurozone greece would die as a nation he also says the important is in terms of the country meant taining any credibility that it has left on the global financial stage and not credibility is said city tested quite soon is old it is from the so-called troika arrive in greece to see whether they've fulfilled their part of the bargain when it comes to making the cuts that they were asked to do on whether they receive the next round of bailout money a massive thirty one billion euros worth of assistance whether those cuts are necessary they're certainly not popular here in thessaloniki we've seen thousands of people out on the streets of greece's second city demonstrating against the way

that the current governments are handling the financial crisis in greece and anger and the way the government is dealing with the crisis is upon they're doing is wrong it's not just in terms of protest the greek people are airing their their grievances with the current government if you look at the latest political polls we're seeing that some are ases government lies in second place behind a a opposition party that's anti bailout money what's perhaps more worrying though is if you see that in place is the ultra rightist party golden dawn party that has a far right agenda some of called neo nazi and in fact they certainly have a seemingly growing popularity here in greece which is concerning many people many people i've seen out in the streets here in testimony protesting what they call the fascist organization i have to say that this demonstration thessaloniki far more peaceful than some we've seen in the past. in greece that people are upset airing

their views but they're certainly not of the violence a that we've seen in cities like nothings as people demonstrate against the handling of the financial crisis. it's common in greece where cuts are being met with a wall of public protests in portugal government slashes to social safety nets have been dubbed an act of war against the working class next door in spain angela merkel's visit sparked street protests with demonstrators demanding an end to poland's meddling in madrid's affairs thanks to the daunting financial storm clouds over the eurozone with the clock central bank forced to roll out the artillery he says it will now begin buying up your own nation's debts to stabilize their borrowing costs but a financial advisor market believes this isn't the solution. they refuse to deal with the issues it's very simple you feel for fiscal integration which means that the germans signed for everybody else's debt and you get. a

shared liability for the debt. is clear they should have a split of the euro. in the meantime what you can do is keep pretty money which is what everybody is hoping for is just a drug to keep printing it to actually help the situation until the politics can catch up with the politics. and they've had lots and lots of meetings but we're still no closer to. lucian for the eurozone it's anything but smooth sailing for the larger more stable european economies too in france the president's ratings are in a freefall as waste war and economic weakness take their toll on the public. explains traditional means of dealing with stress just aren't cutting it anymore. bronze medals lost its title as the country with the highest per capita consumption of antidepressants but the french certainly have at last a peasant as of now with more reasons to be unhappy because the new record

unemployment levels an economy that's just not growing and we prospects all around and when they look to their new president they don't expect much of a future either so much so that sixty eight percent of french people are fearful for their future close with a record high of seventy percent in two thousand and five shortly after jacques chirac was reelected for a second term but did manage to beat all other presidents in unpopularity after just one hundred days on the job. rating this came after nine years in government and. bad ratings after only four months. so it's catastrophic situation for you when you vote for change and you relate as the president doesn't have even a plan to deliver. the reforms you vaguely promised i mean of course you are. adding salt to injury the state just threw

a life like to a struggling mortgage lender by guaranteeing its debts after launch explicitly declared the world of finance as his enemy during the election campaign. this craziness has to stop i think this financial sector is spending on the other side billions for things which are not a priority for us. francis began sending direct aid to anti assad regions in syria a former french colony a move that shortly followed along as promised to recognize a provisional government formed by the opposition an all too familiar style in french foreign policy that irks citizens like mathilde despite having voted for a law and what she calls france's intrusive behavior that she says is all about securing for now. show interest. we can change president but the foreign policy doesn't change both main political parties decided to go to war in my native

country to send the french army to go and kill people and i recoded to do it is syrian money abroad that we're trying to get just like what happened with libya that the french have a superiority complex to a point where they imagine that they are the one saving others here but they don't know this is are we see other people for their money. a teacher at a local school at a mother of three this is what she tells the kids. they tell their kids to study hard improve their language skills and then they must think of their future outside of france are your call force and at this point the french have clearly lost patience does or sylvia r.t. paris. the world shifted to the east this week as heavyweight asia pacific nations gathered to decide how to prop up global growth the corn and weather of the russian far east didn't chill the walls between russia and china whose friendship is seen as a strong asset to economic recovery but is dmitri medvedev is in the city of lot of

a stock. when life of a person was rounding up the results of the two thousand and twelve form which russia posted for the first time he basically again praised the fact that apec is extremely important as a region and as an organization it accounts for around fifty percent of the global economic output and global trade and therefore the shift is happening globally towards this region and russia is no exception and not in a fiction as. china plays an extremely important role as a driver of global economic growth actually in an exclusive interview that the president gave prior to this forum that it was and also stuart stated the importance of russian chinese relations china is indeed becoming a global economic and political hub china has taken up this new leading role not only in russia's eyes but also in the hours of the whole world what makes this rather special however is that russia and china are neighbors and our special relations took thousands of years to evolve to where they are. over the coming

years we are bound to achieve a one hundred billion dollar turnover rate well that exclusive interview is of course available on our t.v. you tube channel you can catch it there but also i think more important was the q. and a session which followed that round up of the four of them and letting the person had a chance to comment on this state of russian and european relations of course the eurozone is now in a crisis and therefore that in a question was asked as to what is happening between russia and europe is there a trade war he answered that there's the situation is far from a called trade war and the fact that your commission is new right now looking into gas problems a so-called monopoly position on the eastern european markets is based on the economic problems in the region and that basically europe now wants to transfer some of this economic burden onto russia and a rather peculiar and taunting i would say question that let. i was asked to

comment on his recent stop the he made prior to the apec summit and that was your model in russia siberia to teach a flock of cranes to fly south he was using a hang glider and the journalist said that basically it's created a whole wave of internet jokes a comparison also was made to russia's electoral race that only sixty three percent of the krays the sighted to follow putin and the other decided to go somewhere else and this is what he had to say and if you're not all the creams fallujah mediately the dawn of the if it was i must admit it's also the leaders fault the pilots phoned the not all the koreans follow and mediately if i was too fast and too high he can't park there are also birds who don't fly in a flock even if they aren't part of the flock they're part of our population and they should be taken care of as much as possible. and i was listening to that q.

and a at the international press center here and the answer was followed by a standing ovation when it's not just economic interest russia and china have in common there's also been agreement on international disputes much to the detriment of the u.s. says financial consultant to money. the time between putin and hu jintao have been extremely strong and this has frankly been at the expense of relations with the u.s. and not overtly obviously but when it comes to issues like syria and iran there is a great deal of court nation between the two sides on those political issues then you know these things spill over into the economic side as well of course you know and we're starting to talk about how both countries handle the oil embargo that the u.s. has been sort of pushing on iran you know russia as a producer and china as a consumer they both you know the fact that they are harmonizing this really sort

of helps to. counteract u.s. u.s. influence and the ability to which the u.s. can exert its influence on its european allies in asia and japan specifically so we're seeing a lot of that. now to syria a powerful explosion has rocked the country's largest city aleppo a car bomb near two hospitals in a sports stadium killed at least seventeen civilians and injured forty others the city's been plagued by violence a massive battle between rebels and government forces have been going on for days now on saturday troops loyal to president assad turned back an attack on a major military base this comes while the u.n. syria peace envoy brahimi is in egypt trying to make during parties cease fire. number of the syrian social club group told me little earlier that there's been a pattern of a rise in violence ahead of any diplomatic meetings aimed at finding a peaceful solution. whatever the security council met on syria there was an atrocity before that i think the most infamous one was

a supposed massacre on the fourth of february when we remember russia and china use a double veto against a resolution in the security council condemning syria and this trend has continued in a sense we've seen a few low end massacre taking place when kofi annan was about to meet president assad the next day and so on and so forth western powers have for a long time seen this conflict as the same model the same you know viewing point just like this did with afghanistan three decades ago the western powers have given these jihadists these extremist limbs the opportunity to win a certain war they've helped them they pop them they wanted them they gave them weapons and they won a war and they didn't think that this was because of the cia and m i six funding and backup but actually because they thought god actually gave them this victory and this has brought a lot of trouble to and alienated large segments of the societies of the muslim

societies in the western countries. you can sort of this and many other stories online in addition to what you see here on screen here's what else is there for you the web site of the moment is called because taylor is on soldiers now germany is working on the spy upon as berlin creates a brand new intelligence network. of russian prosecutors talk of the more exotic forms of corruption and sex bribes sparking debate over just went to draw the line on illicit payments. barack obama's captivating showing at the democratic national convention this week appears to be paying off new polls give him an edge over republican rival mitt romney if only by the slimmest of margins and with just two months to go to lead presidential vote both candidates will be working overtime to outshine the other

the auntie's marine important reports that may be a challenge. in two thousand and eight for aco bomb i turned us politics into something of a pop culture phenomenon we made at one of those defining moments. a moment when our nation is at war our economy is in turmoil the democratic presidential candidate accepted his party's nomination valley to rebuild america's moral standing and break from the policies of his predecessor the failure to respond is a direct result of a broken politics in washington and the failed policies of george w. bush four years after change occupied the white house america is still at war twenty three million citizens are unemployed and most of the national security policies cemented by george w. bush continue unabated or have been expanding their code of what were illicit abuses under bush imprisonment without trial spying without warrants way is now

replaced. imprisonment and torture largely with assassination which is actually not a moral improvement under obama's leadership guantanamo bay remains open the patriot act has been renewed warrantless wiretapping extended but cia black sites have closed targeted killings have been justified drone strikes publicly acknowledged military commissions codified however enhanced interrogation like waterboarding has been banned critics say obama has not only double down on bush's policies he's also raised the stakes signing the national defense authorization act made him the first us president to assert the right to assassinate anyone anywhere without any legal sanction if there is a war cries out there we can the war cries iraq obama should tops the list this made many of those who voted for him hoping for change left disillusioned in fact what they appear to have voted for was more of the same obama's ratings are now the

lowest of any incumbent president since the one nine hundred eighty s. the two major parties are very very much the same on all the important issues when it comes to spending more money than we have engaged in in foreign conflicts that we can't afford the cost of america's overseas military campaigns have contributed to a u.s. national debt that topped sixteen trillion dollars this week while obama's america is running on empty critics say wall street continues to play largely by the same rules that led to the global financial crisis there hasn't been regulation of the banks in a sufficient way and that the main crisis affecting the united states which is to say the financial clutch on the global economy and the corporate stranglehold on the political system hasn't changed at all because president obama comes from a coalition that led to that in the first place since obama has stepped into the white house america has seen an unprecedented rise in grassroots movements like the

tea party and. occupy wall street they'll both very different one thing uniting them is the claim that the people of america are being ignored by their own government the two major us political parties have historically gone to great lengths and have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to highlight their differences yet following obama's first term in office the biggest change may be that more voters are likely to see a democrat and a republican as two sides of the same court hurry up or not i r.t. new york. kevin zeese director of come home america believes both candidates are that a sort of corporate rather than public interest then romney i think is a great example of what's wrong with america that he's obviously a he's highly his taxes for the american people as was noted by those winds is he sending money or sure he created he became wealthy by destroying u.s.

businesses and create more jobs overseas and he's exactly what's wrong with this country on the economic side if he's a one percenter and he's the one percenter deep in his heart so he's really what's wrong with president obama the same time you know he supported by wall street he supported by the health insurance industry put in place policies that supported corporate agenda so neither of these candidates really represent the people they represent the big business moneyed interests and not the people of either romney or obama will confront these issues and that you will you even discussion about breaking up the big banks you want here any discussion about amending ending u.s. empire cutting the military budget. this week canada expelled all iranian diplomats and close its embassy in tehran it declared iran a state sponsor of terrorism and criticize its nuclear program and stance on syria this push relations to crisis point is to round promised retaliation calling ottawa a pawn of the u.s. meanwhile in israel the rhetoric being used by sworn enemy iran is actually proving

useful to some trying to justify a relentless push for a new settlement policy i went to one of the israeli enclaves to explain. the call to prayer religious jews walk past a mosque in judaism's second holiest city the scene speaks volumes about the gap between two peoples living cheek by jowl forty five years ago the part of hebron the largest city in the west bank was returned to jewish control since then around six hundred jewish families have lived in a small enclave outnumbered vastly by palestinians they vow they will never be driven out despite the fact that jewish settlement in hebron is widely considered illegal and international law and so they justify their presence in part by looking for an enemy the fact that. there is a distinct target to get the jews out of her own is not a and and in and of itself it's

a means to an end that being that they don't want to use in her own they don't want to is in jerusalem but even more than that they don't want you in tel aviv or in haifa or anywhere else and lately instead of pointing fingers of palestinians the settler movement has begun championing the claims of iranian president mahmoud ahmadinejad he stokes fear and uncertainty in the hearts of most israelis is their rhetoric their lot of faith means but all of them in the future this should not exist and that they don't tell us is all should remain this sit or over and over again but the hostile talk from tehran is having unintended consequences the second movement. miniaturize comments inadvertently putting him in the camp when israel's most widely circulated daily newspaper recently listed the safest cities to live in a time of emergency most israelis didn't notice that listed among the so-called cities of refuge with civil settlement alongside residential centers within israel

proper. is doing for the settlers what they've been struggling to do alone and that is give them legitimacy by terrifying ordinary israelis so they forget to distinguish between israel proper and the settlements but a growing chorus of any settlement protestors is calling on the government to cool down and stop buying into the politics of fear it's obvious that the government is talking about iran as a diversion they version from the no peace with the palestinians with. what's going on with the settlements with the amount of money that they're spreading on the settlements nonetheless the city movement is moving full steam ahead behind me is palestinian have run permission to drive to this boom comes from the israeli army that sits here just outside palestinian have run inside jewish have run this is the perfect example of how israeli settlements and palestinian villages and cities exist on top of each other and for as long as the settlers can play on israeli fear

and convince israelis that muslims want to kill them wherever they are they'll continue building their settlements and ordinary israelis will remain focused on the freight outside their borders rather than look at what is happening in their own backyard police here r.t. hebron. now to some other international news making headlines around the world a spate of attacks that hit in the iraqi cities killing at least ninety two a car bomb targeted police recruits morning up for job at an oil company's office in the northern city of kirkuk outside of the capital turned soldiers were killed in the dawn ambush of the car bombings hit cities from the southern port of basra to the northwest syrian border. when is it claimed responsibility for the attacks. given the rugs vice president has been sentenced to death after a court ruled he was guilty of masterminding the killings of the country's security forces and shias al-hashmi was not in court those who fled to turkey as soon as the charges against him emerged in december the case sparked

a political crisis in iraq with other sunni politicians burning the prime minister who issued the warrant for. a dictator. eighty police officers have been injured during clashes at a kurdish cultural festival in western germany rest began after a teenager tried to get into the event with a band the flag police used pepper spray as they were pulled of the stones and bottles of water clashes loss of about two hours with thirty one people out. of. foreigners witnessing daily protests and violence though this time incited by the police security offices resorted to tear gas and stun grenades to deal with schools a peaceful demonstrators who defied a government panel authorized rallies activists packed the streets demanding democratic change in the release of political prisoners saying the ruling family is ignoring nichols on tuesday bahrain's court decided to uphold the guilty verdict for opposition activists accused of plotting to overthrow the government and some

who's a cheap political analyst for the u.k. economy website thinks the protest is just getting a mentor. but the problem in bahrain is this is an actual democratic reform movement this is a real arab spring movement this isn't like the kind of fake arab spring that you saw in egypt this has been brewing and boiling over for over one year now but yet it's been more or less not commented on at all in the global mainstream corporate media and some of the state run media organizations like the b.b.c. they're in a very difficult position the opposition movement because as a result of this ruling some of the potential sentences for protesting gets the government could be as much life in prison so what's happening in their sort of constructing a sort of program. to quell any dissent whatsoever. well that's the week before you hit back in just a few moments with

a recap of our top stories. i had a family i lived in a fairly nice community wasn't which was an upscale it was just like you know archie bunker society ok then they started showing up here what happened was my company decided i could get cheap labor and they got rid of us. were those are.

the rules of the eaglets line legally we have to get up every morning we have to go to work and you know we have to pay our bills and we have to do it and that's just the american dream and if you want the american dream you have to go by the law as i figure it's here's one of the major trails in the united states and. i watch and they run run down my property and something about this noise. bothers a little chap mean a cockroach from coming over the wire is protecting the country i'm the kind of guy who doesn't mind it is pants dirty so i come out here you know we're all immigrants as well know that we all do something or else. they were young and high flying. their careers were on takeoff. that flight for them was one of many. and the last one.

locomotive. leaving the ice monarchy. you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture. on a card is a boy educated a child gives that definition care to show a great question and it's right go if we have a good resource right side up.